The Electro-Gravity Energy Extractor - Will it work?

If you put a battery in a bowl of water bubbles start appearing at the
terminals. The water is being disassociated into its components Hydrogen
and Oxygen. This is called electrolysis. I asked myself what would I
observe if this was at the bottom of the ocean instead of on the kitchen
table? Perhaps the bubbles of gas would be different sizes and possibly
more gas would go into solution rather than express itself as bubbles.
But, and this is the crucial question: Would the same voltage and
current do the same amount of disassociation? The volumes under pressure
of course would be much smaller, but is the mass the same - or similar?

As at present I don't know the answer to this question I'm going to
speculate that the disassociation is not very pressure sensitive, and
that the same applies for the creation of gas molecules from oxygen and
hydrogen ions.

If this is the case we can tap a practically infinite source of free
energy as follows:

Dangle a pipe from the surface of a suitably deep lake or ocean. At the
bottom place electrodes so that evolved gasses rise into the pipe. This
causes a rising current of water in the pipe. As the pipe nears the
surface the bubbles expand and more will come out of solution resulting
in a more boisterous effect. At the surface there will be a geyser of
water and gas. Reclaim the energy in the gasses to help power the
electrodes and insert a turbine to tap the energy of the rising column
of water to supply the losses and export the rest.

Basic principle

Energy flow schematic
One possible configuration

Just suppose for sake of argument that we were able to reclaim all of
the energy in the gasses to feed a 100% efficient electrolysis system.
We would have a closed cycle which somehow ‘creates' surplus energy as a
side effect. Where is this energy coming from? One way of looking at the
rising column is that it is less dense than the surrounding water and so
is forced up by hydrostatic pressure which is an effect of gravity. The
work done by a buoyant gas near the surface is about 10KJ for every
metre depth per cubic metre of gas. This is a maximum figure though but
just suppose your electrolysis plant was producing 1 litre of gas per
second over a 10 metre depth this would develop something less than
100W, double the depth and roughly double the power. The raw (and
maximum) figure, without taking losses and effects of dissolved hydrogen
for a 1Km pipe is 9KW per gas litre generated per second. The sums and
unknowns are too tough for me to go beyond these back of envelope
calculations, and there are of course serious losses but the bottom line
is that if electrolysis works at pressure then gravity will do the rest.

There is plenty of scope for some experimentation to see what happens at
depth and if sea water is a suitable fluid or whether a closed system
say running up a mountain side is economic. There is plenty of scope for
imagining various configurations of pipes and energy extraction methods.
Happy ‘free' energy hunting.

This system is the exact inverse of magically condensing water at the top
of a mountain and using it in a hydro-electric scheme. How do you get the raw material up there? ...
by piping it up using its own bouyancy from an electrolysis set at the bottom ...
and don't forget to generate electricity at the top as well. In this configuration
electrolysis is at atmospheric pressure and turbines are single phase.

The initial energy calculations should be very easy for a competent person
to do using ball-park figures.

This could be used for refrigeration as the expanding gasses will extract
heat from their surroundings.

The multi-phase column has simplicity in its favour but is a tricky
engineering problem.

A prudent method might be to keep the evolved gasses separate.

A closed-loop mountain-side system might be a better than an
open ocean
PLEASE let me know if it will work